


Twenty minutes

by phngi



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Development, During Canon, Episode: s03e14-15 The Boiling Rock, Escape, Established Relationship, F/M, Self-Reflection, canon expansion really, mai is underrated, mai thinks about her life for the second time ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:54:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25385611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phngi/pseuds/phngi
Summary: “This isn’t about you, this is about the Fire Nation!” he had insisted just minutes ago. She tucks a stray lock of glossy, black hair behind her ear. Replaying the words in her head stings her pride again, but in her indignation, she also perceives the truth - that she is undeniably jealous, much as she hates the idea."In which we actually get to see Mai process her relationship with Zuko and work through her ultimate decision at the Boiling Rock.Takes place in canon during the events of The Boiling Rock Part 2. Would love comments and thoughts!
Relationships: Mai & Ty Lee (Avatar), Mai/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 89





	Twenty minutes

“I don’t need any protection,” she snaps, glaring daggers at the young guard who has just bolted into the room. He quavers only slightly as she wishes a foul consequence on him for his interruption - it isn’t often that she opens the dam of emotion and when she does, she intends to ride out the wave, especially when it comes to Zuko.

  


Behind her, the man in question is unable to stop himself from chuckling. He shakes his head, smiling proudly, suddenly calm. “Trust me, she doesn’t.” She peeks at him and commands herself not to smile back.

  


“I’m sorry,” the guard presses on. “But I’m under direct orders from your uncle to make sure nothing happens.”

  


Mai opens her mouth to retort angrily but -

  


_WHOOSH._

  


Without warning, Zuko suddenly throws a fistful of flames at their feet. It’s a measly spark, large enough to scare yet not enough to damage - a fact that she observes instantly, but the asinine guardsman leaps clumsily in front of her with his arms spread wide in what he seems to think is a protective gesture. He nearly knocks her backwards before she digs her heel into the floor and braces herself, and meanwhile, Zuko has almost reached the open door already. With dread mounting, she thinks viciously that she should have slammed it shut and jammed the lock as soon as he’d entered the room, and to hell with whatever the guards and her uncle might have said in protest. 

  


“ _Get off of me!”_ The words rush out of her, desperate, enraged, and panicked.

  


In one silky motion, she seizes the guard from behind and shifts her weight between her feet, turning on her grounded heel to hurl him to the side. He tumbles and crashes headlong into the opposite wall without getting up again. Using the momentum of the maneuver, she launches herself toward Zuko, narrowing her focus on his back. She can feel the dissipating heat of his fire blast on her heels. It only takes a beat for her to see that she won’t catch hold of him in time and a cold sweat starts to form on her brow as she realizes what he will do. The air in the room is suddenly thick with an urgent fear that threatens to envelop her but she doesn’t pause just yet to acknowledge it, and continues barreling forward. Even as Mai sees him pivot to grab the handle, she does not stop. 

  


The clang of heavy iron slamming shut against the frame is deafening, and so is each clink of metal as he fumbles with the lock and traps her inside. She can hear her blood pooling in her ears as she collides with the door and throws her palms up furiously against it. Instantly, the room falls dark except for the few beams of light peeking through the open slot where their gazes meet. Her sharp, pale eyes dare him, accuse him, plead with him, while she recognizes the look in his own all too well from their last few months together. It was the look he had whenever Azula mentioned their uncle, the same look he had on Ember Island when he’d screamed into the fire, shaken and aghast. He is angry at himself. 

  


Wetness gathers about his amber irises before he tears himself away wordlessly and runs off in the direction of the ensuing riot, not looking back, leaving her boring a hole in his retreating figure until it fades from view. Instinctively, she tightens her face to stop the droplets forming in her own eyes from falling to the concrete, knowing that the last time she had allowed herself to cry had been oh, nearly four years ago, when a certain crown prince was sent away with a disfigured face and an impossible mission. Look who’s leaving her again, the bastard.

  


Taking a step backward, she grinds her teeth and punches the wall with a frustrated, visceral snarl. The fear is coiling itself around her, tightening, inviting her in. Mai cannot remember the last time she allowed it to rear its ugly head this much; however, this time, the sensation has a different quality to it, stronger...or is she weaker? As she sinks slowly to all fours, tangled in her satin robe, a familiar scent like bergamot and jasmine floats into her nostrils - his scent. She closes her eyes and tries to breathe deeply, inhaling the smell before it fades, hating that it calms her. It conjures the familiar contours of his neck and chest, of lounging next to him in the palace while she studies their intertwined fingers, his calloused and hers long and delicate. Her limp hands curl into soft fists at the memory and her dark red nails scratch the stone. She turns over the question in her mind.

  


_Why love a traitor? Why love Zuko?_

  


She knows the answers.

  


The way he rehearses his greetings when her parents visit the capital because on some days he swears that diving through the North Pole waters was more manageable than small talk. 

  


The way he tosses bread into the courtyard pond at an angle so that the pieces never hit the turtle-ducks, especially the little ones.

  


The way he reads her face carefully to detect any sign of danger whenever Azula demands a private conversation with her, and does the same when she returns, knowing how his sister is.

  


The way he carries soft inflections in his voice that reflect his tender disposition, which she alone in the Fire Nation has been privy to since his return. It’s the voice that reassures her of her agency and her worth, even proudly asserts her strength in the middle of an argument to the very guard she just incapacitated, without ever sounding disingenuous because he always wears his heart on his sleeve. It’s the voice that questions, shouts, defends, protests, and does a million things that hers is still learning how to do. 

  


Perhaps she has forgotten how much she loves that honesty, seeing him so wickedly punished for it years ago. She recalls the same earnest candor in his words from moments ago, when he claimed with a blazing conviction that each of his insane decisions was made with a sound mind to save their nation, to save the world.

  


It isn’t the thought of losing him that terrifies her, but the thought of him leaving her behind. 

  


Her expression softens so that her eyebrows unknit and her tight jaw slackens. She grips her left arm with her right to stop herself from shaking. The guard is beginning to regain consciousness from the sound of his unintelligible moans, but she ignores him. Since the coup of Ba Sing Se, she has held to the mission of convincing Zuko that home is where he belongs, that the Fire Nation is a good place to be. Surely, the grandiose halls of the palace, as garish and tiresome as they might be, are better than the cobbled streets of cities like Omashu - or rather, New Ozai - with its slews of violent rebel groups ready to take the lives of her family. So, when he showed uncertainty, she had stoppered it with an embrace. When he felt weak, she had prodded him to indulge in the superficial luxuries of his title. She’d hoped it would keep him tethered, fearing that it wouldn’t.

  


A smile etches itself onto her stony, ashen face, though it’s bitter and sour, and guilt bleeds from her chest to her fingertips like ink in water as she admits it: she has fostered a lie, for both of them to eat up. The temporary feeling of control when they would wag their fingers and beckon servants was just that - temporary. Has her own lavish lifestyle ever cushioned the blow of her parents' neglect, or stopped her from constantly lamenting the staleness of her life? Zuko has been the sole proprietor of her joy, and still she tries to bind him here, claiming some false patriotism.

  


Clearly, the lie has never been enough. Her prince has found something, some kind of higher purpose while she was looking the other way. “ _This isn’t about you, this is about the Fire Nation!”_ he had insisted just minutes ago. She tucks a stray lock of glossy, black hair behind her ear. Replaying the words in her head stings her pride again, but in her indignation, she also perceives the truth - that she is undeniably _jealous_ , much as she hates the idea. Zuko has found the courage to care and believe so deeply in something that he is willing to sacrifice everything for the chance to grow and nurture it; which, she concedes, is so much more than she can say for herself.

  


Though maybe, it isn’t. There is one thing she believes in, and it’s good enough to start with.

  


She climbs to her feet and stands poker-straight, squaring her shoulders. She glares at the door with an intensity that would make a full-grown saber-toothed moose lion cower.

  


“...Miss?” calls the guard in a shaky voice as he puts a hand to his temple and raises himself to a kneeling position. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

  


“Get us out of here.” 

  


Still dazed, he merely peers at her. She reiterates the point staunchly without turning around, but the tip of a three-pronged knife sliding menacingly out from under her wrist doesn’t escape him. 

  


“He took the keys off my belt, miss. We’ll need to wait for help.”

  


“You said there was a riot going on,” she says fiercely, turning to him with a withering look. “Shouldn’t there be more guards running around looking for suspicious activity or something?”

  


Swallowing hard, he struggles to maintain his composure. Even having just hit his head, he knows there is a limit to his authority here with the warden as her uncle. 

  


“Yes, Miss. But the riot is happening in the yard. The other guards won’t come up to this floor unless they see or hear criminal activity along the way.”

  


“Criminal activity, huh?” she repeats, extracting the knife from her sleeve and twirling it pointedly. He takes an almost imperceptible step backwards. “How loud can you yell? Let’s see if we can’t make help come faster.”

  


He gulps.

  


* * *

  


  


One theatrical scream, three guards pinned down by throwing stars, and one finally opened door later - she is charging through the prison corridors, slinking cat-like past gaggles of guards, up and away from the chaos of what she can only assume is the riot. The jeers and roars from the yard resonate through the floors of the central high tower. No doubt Zuko will use the confusion to escape, and as her uncle always reminds her, there is only one way in or out of The Boiling Rock. 

  


She doesn’t know when the adrenaline of her epiphany will wear off, but two things feel certain and wrangle her focus. One, that Azula, more driven and spiteful than ever thanks to the rebel invasion during the eclipse, is on the premises with murder dancing in her royal fingertips- 

  


A pair of guards who are rounding the corner on their way down naively attempt to restrain her. She twists neatly out of their grasp, leaps onto their shoulders, and propels herself upward to the next floor.

  


\- and two, that as long as she draws breath, Zuko will not fight alone.

  


Scanning the hallway, she spots the shaft at the far end that leads up through a wide, square hatch in the ceiling. Another guard spots her from the opposite landing and gives a shout. She thrusts her arm in his direction without looking and halts him with a stiletto (merely pinning his collar to the wall of course, she isn’t barbaric). Only four guards stand by the lift. Fish in a barrel. She pauses just long enough to wipe a layer of sweat from under her straight-cut fringe and takes a breath before lunging forward. Within seconds, the guards in question lie crumpled in heaps, short arrowheads sticking the edges of their uniforms to the floor. They stare helplessly at the platform as the gears screech and whirr into motion, carrying their assailant. _“A noble, demure young lady”_ , the warden had told them. _“She won’t be any trouble.”_

  


Alone in the lift, Mai rolls up her sleeves and sweeps her eyes over the holsters, expertly tallying the ammo in her head. She does the same with the ones on her ankles. Sixteen...twenty-two...and another knife here...she estimates that it’s enough to halt perhaps twelve more guards, if she’s lucky. Sighing, she looks up toward the harsh daylight drawing closer and closer. She thinks it would have been nice to tell Ty Lee she was about to make this crazy decision and grimaces, imagining the acrobat clutching her in a back-breaking hug with tears in her eyes, gushing about the power of love and how worried she is about what prison will do to Mai’s aura. Maybe it is for the best that they won’t have the chance for a touchy-feely farewell after all.

  


The metal groans as the lift raises her to a grated dock in the corner of the roof. She squints in the sun and taps the hilt of a stiletto impatiently, readying herself in a fighting stance. Surprisingly, no one seems to notice her, but the flash of unmistakably blue fire in the sky immediately tells her why.

  


“There’s the warden! I see him!” shouts a guard at the front of the line with graying hair, obviously the more senior of the lot, who is peering through a spyglass at the outbound gondola. The other guards hurry to his side. Mai strains her neck to see for herself. She can make out Ty Lee, dueling with some girl with short brown hair in a prison uniform, while the terrific clashes of azure and crimson flames can only be the royal siblings themselves. It’s difficult not to look down at the lava-like waters below waiting to swallow them all. “Come _on,_ Zuko _,”_ she whispers, tightening her grip on the weapon.

  


A sudden movement - then the familiar roar of her uncle rips through the air. “ _CUT THE LINE!_ -” 

  


He is immediately silenced by a towering prisoner who claps a pair of thick hands over his mouth, muffling any further instructions.

  


Mai’s eyes go wide. 

  


“He wants us to cut the line,” parrots one of the guardsmen incredulously. 

  


“But if we cut the line, there’s no way he’ll survive!” his colleague argues, furrowing his brow under his helmet visor.

  


The supervisor lowers his spyglass with a grim and solemn determination. “He knows that.”

  


The others exchange a series of uncertain glances before their obtuse sense of duty sets in, to Mai’s shock. Even if their loyalty to her uncle didn’t extend as far as saving his life, what did the imbeciles think would happen if they endangered the princess? Three guards hurtle into an outdoor supply closet and emerge with a large saw and a crowbar, which one of them jams hurriedly into the spinning gondola coils. Sparks fly as the metal crunches and screeches horribly, slowing, and the guards lift the saw, aiming its teeth. Crowbar-guard, whose arms are fairly thin and straining to hold the cable back, calls for them to cut it as fast as they can.

  


In the air above, the gondola swings violently at the sudden change in speed. The momentum threatens to throw any one of them overboard and even Azula stumbles backwards. Another guard sprints over to the other side of the coil and wedges a second crowbar in to hold it steady as the others push and pull the saw. She watches with bated breath as Ty Lee climbs to the top of the clip and points frantically before she and Azula escape to the inbound gondola passing on the opposite track, leaving Zuko and his companions watching them warily, having finally regained their balance. A momentary mixture of relief and fear swirls uncomfortably in her stomach at the sight of Ty Lee safe and Azula heading back in this direction. As soon as the princess is too far to reach the escapees, Mai turns to face the guards just as Zuko leans over the edge of the gondola and swoops back inside the carriage. Inhale, exhale. End of the road. 

  


How many minutes had she spent locked in that room, wading through the mire in her head? Fifteen? Twenty? It's funny, she thinks wryly, how just twenty minutes of sitting with herself, twenty moments of pointed self-criticism under pressure, could make her do crazier things than she ever did chasing the Avatar around the world. Could make her go against the grain of her modus operandi in a way that the threat of death by lightning never could. Add a healthy dash of heartbreak to your life and you practically come out a changed woman.

  


Guard-number-one is panting as he heaves the great saw back toward his chest and forth toward his partner, and he doesn’t hear the faint whistling sound of her shuriken knives slicing through the air until he’s toppled over and finds himself inexplicably immobile, wrists strung up on a column that had been to his right a second ago. He looks up just in time to see the saw go clattering across the concrete and guard-number-two’s back slamming into the adjacent column, the wind knocked out of him. 

  


“What are you _doing_?!” number-two manages to wheeze at the slim, unassuming girl standing ten feet away, staring at him coolly. 

  


As the other guards round on her, she muses that she didn’t expect to feel so strangely serene jumping into a battle that she knows she cannot win; but then, she supposes, this time it’s finally about something more interesting than winning. Out of the corner of her eye, the gondola sways dangerously and she beams a thought in its direction, uncharacteristically hoping that some divine power will convey what she wishes she could tell him. It’s somewhere between an apology and a challenge, trusting - believing - he will make this all worth it somehow.

  


She flicks her wrist sharply and catches the knife that extends into her palm with a confident, practiced ease.

  


“Saving the jerk who dumped me,” she replies, and prepares to surge forward.

**Author's Note:**

> I always thought Mai as a character was underserved by the writing, whether it's because there wasn't enough time to flesh her out in the plot or because episodes were limited to about 22 minutes back in the day. Either way, since Avatar's come back via Netflix, I've wished I could have seen more of how she processed things and decided to break her pattern of repressing her feelings during this episode, arguably making one of the bigger sacrifices in the show. Also wished we could have seen more of her and Zuko's emotional reconciliation (and no, I'm not counting anything that happened in the post-series comics).


End file.
